Hey Bloggers,
It’s strange to think that I will be typing this blog for the last time this year! I can’t believe how fast my first year at University has gone by, it’s crazy to think back on my first day of classes and then to think now about how much has happened since then. I can safely say that I am really happy with my first year experience as a CAP student at UBC, I think that CAP is a really great and unique program that allows a nice smooth transition into the University environment. I enjoyed all of my classes that I had the opportunity to take, some more than others, but overall i’ve had a positive first year experience. One of the classes that I found really interesting was this class which is of course my ASTU! I enjoyed ASTU because it was a really great way for me to become more comfortable with reading scholarly discourse, proper essay writing technique, and we got to read some really great literature, all stuff that will definitely help me in my coming years at UBC. So with all of that being said I want my last blog post to focus upon the highlights of my ASTU class and reflect upon a great first year at University!
When I heard that our main topics were going to be memory and post 9/11 literature I was really excited because there is a lot of depth to these topics, and the novels, poetry, and essays that we read covered a lot of interesting ground. One of the main highlights from term two for me was reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the fictional post 9/11 novel was for me an accurate representation of what life was like for mourning people after 9/11. I found it to be sad, funny, mature, and sentimental, and I particularly enjoyed how Foer not only chose to focus on the event of 9/11 but also brought in trauma from other generations, like the Dresden bombings and the Holocaust. Another novel from this term I really liked reading was Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Although this novel did not focus on just on 9/11, it incorporated the event is a more subtle way. I found Hamid’s novel interesting because although it is fictional the content enters on a very real topic which is the matter of “Us” and “Them” or “The West vs. the Rest.” It was provoking to see the revelation of the main character Changez from expressing his love of America and how much he feels at home there, and then seeing later in the novel, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 how he begins to question his love for America. This novel definitely expresses some of the real problems that are still occurring in present day.
Going back to term one, I want to reflect on some of my positive experiences! Term one was hard because everything was totally different from high school : the content we tackled, the writing style, and the quantity of work. Taking this ASTU class really helped me in areas of my other class that focused on writing, conducting research and how to properly approach reading scholarly articles. I was great to see improvements in my grades and the quality of my work because I was constantly learning new techniques that catered to these areas of my work. As for literature in term one I enjoyed reading Persepolis, who knew that a comic style narrative could be so though provoking. It was a particularly enjoyable book for me because it was entered upon the real life story of Marjane Satrapi, and it totally opened new doors for me when I learned about what life was really like for a child growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran Iraq war. I’m glad we were able to spend so much time discussing and analyzing Persepolis.
Overall my year in ASTU has been a really great experience, the class definitely gave me some important skills that will greatly help me in my next years at University. The small class size made it possible for me to meet some new people in the CAP stream and made for a really great and productive learning environment. All of the literature we covered was great and I would recommend all of the books to friends and family! Thanks Dr.Luger and to all you guys in this class who made my year in ASTU really great!
Over and Out.
-Magda:)